Google Incurs Fine Over Faulty Word Suggestions

Google France landed in trouble due to its automated search suggestions feature which added "escroc" meaning crook or swindler after the name of a French company and now it has been asked to pay €50,000 ($64,670) to a French company by a court of law.

The search engine giant was asked to pay the compensation after French insurance company Lyonnaise de Garantie initiated the lawsuit on the basis that the Google France suggests the word "escroc" as an addition to any query regarding this company.

A court in Paris opined that this addition of word by the search engine "was offensive towards the company". Also the court added that Google must be able to use "human control" on the operation of words which are suggested by the search giant, reported The Local.

On the other hand, Google Inc. commented that this auto-complete function was not "expression of a human thought", an "opinion" or a "value judgement or criticism", however, this was a result of their automatic algorithm.

The search engine includes Google Suggest which is an auto-complete system for suggesting rest of any phrase on the basis of initial few words or characters typed by the user.